At around 6pm (or maybe earlier? the sun seemed as though it never set) a familiar face drove by. It was Jarrod Hoops towing his SM Evo onto the site. From him, we found out that Andy Lieber would be showing up, but not racing. Having Jarrod meant 4 cars in SM, but we would still need a 5th. After trying to convince him to convince Andy to race on Saturday, we found a DSP car willing to swap to SM under the condition that we would do his work assignment at the Finale..... luckily, it never came to that as a 5th SM car showed up on Saturday morning as a late entry! SM would make a class.
Making a class was only the beginning of the weekend, though. We would still have to get out there and drive.... Back again was Corey Ridgick, with him and Cy Lee having fixed their BSP/SM Evo after a tranny failure in NJ. On top of that, Jarrod's car was as monsterous as ever. It's also a past National Champion car, as well.
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Corey Ridgick in the BSP/SM Evo
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Jarrod Hoops' SM Evo
Round 1 would have everyone hitting cones, which put me in position to take over an early lead with some cautious driving. Dave would pull his usual antics, having a super fast runs negated by cones.
Round 2 wouldn't be quite as easy, with everyone showing that times could drop much further. I kept it clean, shaving a few tenths on each side while Dave would catch a single clean run to put him in 2nd. Hoops and Ridgick both hit cones on their fastest, with times fast enough to show that they were still just as big a threat to take the lead as ever.
Round 3 came the next day, where I managed to keep just in front of Hoops on first driver runs. The co-drivers came up and Dave would slot himself momentarily into 2nd, before Ridgick put down a pair of runs that nearly took over the lead. A single cone would negate it, though, and he would fall into 2nd place between Dave and I.
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Panda at the line
After normal competition came the Super Challenge:
My luck would have it that I'd be paired up again with my fellow NER member and good friend, Scott Thursby, in the first round. Having coned away the win to him in NJ, I went with a fairly safe line on the first run. Ironically, Scott hit a cone that basically handed me the win
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Thursby's Marshmallow
Moving into the 2nd round, I was up against another good friend and former SM ProSolo Champion, Chris Travis. Chris would also hit a cone, despite me taking the win in raw time anyways.
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Chris Travis' (girlfriends') BS S2000
The rounds would just get harder, as I'd have to take on multi-time National Champion (and also NER member) Paul Kozlak. Somehow, I put down a couple good runs to get past him, and move on to the final four.
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The Kozlaks' BS Pontiac Solstice
Unfortunately, my run would stop there, against Sam Strano. A bit of intimidation from Sam being a regular Challenge winner, and also from not cooling tires off enough, would result in a poor first run on my part. Getting the car a little loose into the first slalom would cost me my line on the return trip, resulting in a 0.7 sec deficit into the 2nd run. Somehow, I got my composure back, and clawed back 0.6sec of it, resulting in a 0.1sec win for Strano.
Strano's ESP Mustang
The consolation round started off well enough, but although I had a slim lead coming off the first run, I red-lit the 2nd, pretty much forfeiting the round to Matt Braun.
Matt Braun's SS Lotus Elise
All in all, it was a pretty exciting weekend, and in the end I have enough points to be the Atlantic Zone Champion going into the Pro Finale next month
All photos courtesy of Brian Keuhl
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